


Experimentation in Interpersonal Engineering

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e08 The Things We Bury, F/M, Mild Smut, post episode
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:14:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye might have daddy issues and Fitz reexamines an old, abandoned hypothesis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this was a one-shot and the first chapter can still completely stand alone, but more was requested.

Fitz _has_ to fetch the sonic drill. It's not even up for debate, much as Mack might try. He may not be good with his hands anymore but he's fully capable of carrying a case down thirty meters of hallway without shaking the contents to rubble. Unlike _some_ people he could mention.

(Mack claims the incident with the DWARFs wasn't his fault because he'd just caught an eyeful of Hunter and Bobbi having sex in one of the vans. As if _that_ were even remotely possible.)

The lights in Storage E flicker slowly to life when Fitz enters. There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere about his own slow starts these days but he's never been the type for metaphor. He's a scientist. And he needs a drill.

He rounds one of the shelves of supplies and his shoes squeal against the hard concrete. Laying in the middle of the floor is Skye. She's moving. He holds onto the thought and repeats it in his head a thousand times until it drowns out memories of finding the other Koenig's body stuffed in a vent in a storage closet.

Skye's definitely not dead though. She tilts her head back against the floor to get a better view of him and holds up a hand to block out the light from the overhead lamps.

"Oh," he says. Not very eloquent but there's really no good response to finding your teammate laying on a cold, concrete floor in a storage closet. "I'm sorry. Were you …"

For once his lack of words isn't because of any mechanical difficulty. Knocked out? Sleeping? Testing the motion sensors? None of those options make much sense but he can't think of any better ones.

"No," she says, voice a bit too round and liquidy.

Ah. Crying, then.

He can't blame her. He'd cry too if his long-lost father used their friend's life as collateral.

"Do you want me to get … someone else?" he asks. Trip was his first thought, the way they've been the last months, but he's out for obvious reasons. Jemma was his second, but Fitz doesn't much want to get her for unfortunately even more obvious reasons.

"Oh, God," she says into her hands, rubbing them viciously over her face. She pulls them down to look at him again. "Is it that obvious?"

Fitz bobs his head in an apologetic nod. She rolls to her stomach and makes a noise that's a sort of groan-yell into the floor. He takes an involuntary step back, earning himself a wincing smile from her.

"Sorry." She twists her legs under her and sits back against the shelves. "Just … get whatever you need and go. I'll be fine. I just need a few minutes to get over it."

The drill is at the end of this row. Fitz can see its case from the corner of his eye but he doesn't make a move toward it, just keeps staring at Skye. Slowly, she lifts an eyebrow in his direction.

"Come on," she pleads, "don't make this more awkward than it already is. Just get the thing and go and when we see each other later we'll both pretend this never happened, 'kay?"

"That," Fitz says slowly, careful to get his words just right, "is the single dumbest thing I have ever heard."

She reels back a little. Maybe a little insulted. Maybe thinking about hitting him. Maybe both. He uses the opportunity to sit next to her on the floor.

"A few minutes?" He echoes her words back to her because it's impossible to form his own with the way his thoughts are churning.

A few minutes to get over finding out that a person whose love and affection you craved isn't anything you thought they were? A few minutes to get over nearly losing someone you love at the hands of someone else you love? Because Fitz has no illusions that Skye doesn't love that bastard. He's her _father_ and she's spent a lifetime loving and longing for the idea of him. Fitz knows a thing or two about loving someone who doesn't deserve it. You can't just turn that off, no matter how much you want to.

Skye seems to read his thoughts because she asks, "Wishful thinking?"

Fitz hates to confirm it because she looks like she might start crying again, but he's never been a liar and he won't start now.

"Yeah. I thought so."

She settles back against the shelves again, bringing her arm up against his so they're sharing the same space. She doesn't seem bothered by it so he tries not to be, even though it makes his skin there feel warm through his shirt and his mouth strangely dry.

"I'm not even over he-who-shall-not-be-named," she says, sounding more like her usual self. "I don't know why I thought I'd be over finding out my _dad's_ a psychopath so fast." She goes a little green and turns her head to look at him. "Does this mean I have daddy issues?"

He's still trying to make sense of the strange feeling her closeness is bringing on. (He knows what all the empirical evidence points to but he thought that hypothesis went out the window ages ago, back when he realized the depth of his feelings for Jemma.) It must leave a strange look on his face because Skye's quick to back track.

"I don't mean I'm _not over him_. I _am_. There are just still feelings there that aren't one hundred percent _ew_ right away.… Am I making any sense at all?"

Fitz's mouth quirks up on one side. _Is she making sense?_ It's laughable, but he wisely chooses not to actually laugh. If it didn't set her to crying again, it might make her want to shoot him and she knows where the safety is now, so she might actually be able to pull it off.

This is important and he's got to get it right so he takes a deep breath and focuses on the shelves across from them, not wanting her face to distract him. "She says to the man who's spent the last six months trying to get over Simmons."

Even from the corner of his eye he can see her pitying expression.

"Maybe you don't have to-"

"Yeah," he cuts in, maybe a little too harshly, "I do. She doesn't- she doesn't love me. Not the way I love - _loved_ \- her." Past tense. Because he is not in love with someone who would lie to him the way she did. He knows he's not the man he was before but he's still got too much self-respect for that.

They fall into awkward silence. Fitz is used to it after the last few months but Skye looks distinctly uncomfortable. He was trying to make her feel better and ended up snapping at her. He's a real piece of work these days.

"Sorry," he says.

"No, it's okay." She rests a hand on his knee and he's briefly distracted by the spreading of the strange sensations and the addition of several more, including increased heart rate and minor redirection of blood flow. (The evidence continues to mount in favor of the abandoned hypothesis.) "I shouldn't have said it. I don't want you to be with Simmons if you don't want to be with Simmons. And I don't want to be with Ward … even if I sometimes want to be with Ward." She laughs a little and smiles at him. "Please just tell me I'm making exactly zero sense so we can end this sappy conversation."

Fitz isn't some head in the clouds artist type. He's not a liar. He's not a specialist. He's not _in_ love with Jemma Simmons. He's not the man he once was. But what he is, what he'll always be until his dying day, is a scientist. So he decides to test the hypothesis, just to be certain he wasn't premature in abandoning it.

Her mouth's a little open thanks to her smile, which is fortuitous since Fitz has always been better at tongue-kissing than any other kind. He has a brief moment of fear that he's lost the skill entirely and will come off like a landed fish thrashing around inside her mouth, but then muscle memory kicks in. He knows how to do this.

Her hand spasms on his thigh and then grips it. _Hard_.

That redirection of blood flow isn't minor anymore.

His fingers find the hem of her shirt and slip under it, pulling at her hips to bring her around into his lap. One of her thighs is resting half-atop his and her other leg is bent over his lap, on the verge of setting her fully over him, when one of her hands lifts between them. His tongue immediately finds its way back into his own mouth and the kiss ends with an audible smack.

She holds a hand over her mouth for a long minute, her eyes not quite lifting to his. His fingers are itching to prove their mettle, to prove it's not only his tongue that's still got it, but he practices six months of physical therapy and holds them still at her sides, waiting on her to move.

"Are we doing this?" she asks. Her hand falls away from her mouth and he feels oddly prideful at how red her lips are. "I mean, are _we_ doing this? Or are you trying to work out some Simmons-related issues and I just happen to be the emotionally compromised girl you found crying in a closet?" Her fingers curl in his shirt and her voice is quiet when she adds, "I'm not a stand-in."

Testing the hypothesis doesn't work at all if she's just a stand-in for Jemma but telling her he's testing a hypothesis at all stands a good chance of coming off creepy. And ruining the results. He tries to reassure her that she's not and the words don't reach his tongue. He fumbles and closes his eyes to block out whatever expression his failed attempt brings up in her before trying again, different words this time.

"Am I?"

Her weight eases back a little on his thigh. He's caught her off guard with that.

"A stand-in?" he adds. "For Ward? Or for…" There _was_ another person they were talking about earlier and a certain brand of psychological issue was mentioned.

Skye smacks his shoulder and he has the good sense to look sheepish about it.

"Ew," she says dryly. Her hand stayed where it landed and is moving slow circles over the slightly smarting spot. "So nobody's anybody else's stand-in? We're both just ourselves?"

He nods and allows his fingers to give a little tug. She grins and when she eases into his lap, he again uses her smile to kiss his way into her mouth.

His bad hand slips around her back to the clasps on her bra. He can get them open, even with this hand, but pretends to be having trouble to distract from what his good hand is up to.

The hypothesis has gained as much support from this situation as it possibly can. Any additional data will have to come from the aftermath and that won't be swayed in one way or the other by further experimentation at this juncture. But his hands are still itching for their chance and her little speech makes him long to prove that he is no one's - especially not Grant Ward's - stand-in.

So while his bad hand fumbles clumsily with her bra, his good hand eases the zipper of her jeans down. When his fingers slide between the denim and the soft fabric of her underwear, she gasps a little. He follows the pull on his tongue, bringing his mouth even tighter over hers. She doesn't balk at his gutsy move. She actually rises up on her knees a little bit to make it easier for him to reach.

Like he said, he's not Grant Ward. He doesn't have big, clumsy specialist hands. His hands are (were, will be again) precision instruments. He winds her up and draws her out, slow and easy, so by the end she's bent over his shoulder, gasping his name amid nonsensical verbage.

He pulls his hand out of her pants and gently guides her hips over his slightly lifted leg, letting her ease some of her remaining tension against it. She hums into his shoulder and lifts away, leaving his neck feeling cold.

Her eyes are a little bleary and her voice heavy when she says, " _Wow_."

He's got about half a dozen quips jockeying to be said but ignores them all in favor of a cocky grin. He laces his fingers behind her back as she lifts herself into the center of his lap.

"I was not expecting … all that."

His hands flinch.

"In a good way," she assures him quickly. " _Definitely_ in a good way."

"Good."

He wants to stay here, like this, for a good, long while but practicality tells him he has to leave. For one, he needs to see how he feels about this after the fact and that's not going to be possible so long as he's still very much in the fact. For another, if he doesn't come back soon there's a chance Mack will come looking.

"My drill," he says. It takes about two seconds for them both to look down at his still very obvious arousal. Laughter follows quickly after.

He tries to explain but can't get the words out. She pats his arm and uses the leverage to push herself to her feet.

"I get it," she says. "You came in here for a reason. But are you sure you don't want … help?" Her mouth and voice both twist on the last word. It makes his heart do a strange little twist that has nothing to do with the strain on his jeans. Another point for the hypothesis.

He climbs to his feet with a hand up from her. His problem's not going to go away while she's here. Or while he's here. The whole room smells like them.

He swiftly goes to the shelf to retrieve the drill and holds it out to her.

"Careful!" he cautions. She's better than Mack but she's still a field agent. "Take this to Mack. Make up some excuse. Something reasonable."

"So not 'he gave me a hand-job in a storage closet and had to go take a cold shower'?"

Cold shower is an excellent idea. Just the thing, assuming he can make it to one. Which he can't, not without being spotted. He'll just have to will it down. Which, again, requires that she be not here.

"I need you to go." It comes out a little less desperate and a little more angry.

She looks at him like he slapped her.

He runs his hands through his hair. "I can't … it's not going to go away … with you … here."

"Fine," she says, half-pout, half-pride.

She heads for the end of the aisle only to turn back at the last second. She kisses him on the cheek, the same way she did on that train a lifetime ago. But this time she holds her body close to his and her breath falls over his cheek.

"But we're gonna have a round two later. I want some payback."

It takes him a disturbingly long time to get back to Mack. By the time he does, Skye's long gone and his hypothesis is looking more and more certain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, chocolatebearturk requested a "two weeks later" time stamp on this fic. (And yes, I decided to up the rating for safety.)

There's this station out of southeast Asia that plays reruns of _Friends_ at two o'clock in the morning Playground time. Skye knows because she's got a habit of being up then, forced out of bed by nightmares and memories.

Rather than sit in bed, desperately trying to get her body to sleep again, she stumbles upstairs where she falls into a couch or a chair and hacks the feed with barely a thought. She tries to get work done too - monitor current events, check in on their agents around the world - but a lot of the time she just ends up yelling at Ross and throwing popcorn at the screen until other people start waking up.

Only tonight she stops halfway to the media room. The lights in the lab are on and Fitz is bustling around, talking to no one and making a huge mess. (At least she's pretty sure it's a mess. There's always the chance she just can't see the forest for the trees.)

She comes closer to the windows for a better look inside and isn't exactly surprised to see the remains of his newest gun prototype. The weapon worked for most of their last mission, but overheated so badly that Hunter's spending the night in the med labs with second degree burns.

While she watches, Fitz pulls a mess of wires and metal out of what remains of the weapon's frame and hurls it across the lab. It strikes one of the windows but the glass doesn't crack, it only echoes with a long, metallic clang.

Skye's seen enough. Fitz doesn't stop his angry muttering when she enters, he doesn't even seem to notice her until she grabs his gesturing hand out of the air.

"Skye?" he asks, the word almost lost as she drags him behind her to the media room. He asks a few more questions. Silly ones like "where are we going" and "what are you doing." Seriously, he's supposed to be a genius.

She's been up at this time often enough in the last few months to be sure no one's gonna show up, but she still makes a point of locking the door behind them when they get there.

"Skye!" Fitz yells, finally fed up with her silence.

She sighs and turns to face him, pulling her sleep shirt over her head as she does. She didn't bother to put a bra on before leaving her room and his eyes drop predictably to her chest.

"We're going to have sex," she says, letting the shirt fall to the floor. "You can get on board, or you can go back to yelling at your gun. Or you can go take a cold shower," she adds with an eye to his crotch, which is definitely seeing some activity. "Which might actually involve some yelling at your gun, I don't know what you're into."

Fitz takes a breath so deep he shakes when he releases it. Or that could have something to do with the way he's obviously forcing himself away from her. He even turns to the side to face the wall so he doesn't have to see her and, honestly? She's starting to feel a little self-conscious over here. She was pretty sure nakedness was a solid opening move.

"What are we- um-" He gestures between them.

"We," she says slowly, "are about to have sex."

" _No_ ," he says and it comes out a whine. She's kind a proud of that to be honest. "What  _are_  we?"

"Oh. Well, I dunno." She's been actively not thinking about it for reasons that, if she tried to analyze them, would require  _thinking about it_. But she gives it a whirl now because Fitz seems to be having a crisis and the whole point of this was to stop that. "We've had sex five times in the last two weeks."

"Three."

"Five."

"We didn't have sex in the storage room or the hallway on level two."

"Well, at least one of us orgasmed both of those times, I'm calling it sex."

He rolls his eyes but doesn't turn away again when she walks around him to sit on one of the couches.

"So," she continues, "we're having semi-regular sex in semi-irregular places and we see each other every day and I  _might_  have gotten a weird, sick feeling in my stomach the other day when I walked in on Bobbi asking Simmons if the two of you had ever been-" she twists her hand vaguely in the air- "whatever we are."

He joins her on the couch. It's a very old couch, probably Cold War era, and it sags when he sits down, forcing her closer. She's really not sure if it's more awkward to sit with her thigh pressing into his or to go to all the trouble of trying to scoot away, but she likes how warm he feels and that's reason enough to stay.

"Well," he says, " _I_ definitely get a weird, sick feeling in my stomach whenever I think about you going down to talk to Ward or when he calls on that stupid, bloody phone and insists on talking to you."

She nudges his shoulder with hers. "Yeah, but that's because Ward is a psycho who tried to kill us all." She tries to say it lightly but there's really no way she can pull that off.

Fitz just shakes his head. "How about we not talk about- about  _them_ , okay?" His words come out short and purposeful and when he stumbles she thinks it's because he's trying too hard to get this just right. "I know th-that I lik- _like_  you."

"You like-like me?" she teases. "Like we're in third grade and you're pulling my pigtails?"

He scowls.

"Sorry," she says and genuinely means it. "But this is all a little heavy for me. My last-" She cuts herself off. Right. No talking about  _them_. "I don't usually do it like this. With talking.  _But_  I definitely like-like you too."

He leans a little into her. "Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. You're my friend and we have fun and - I say this completely seriously - you're the best sex I've ever had."

He laughs, drops his head back against the couch back and everything. It's nice to see him like this.

"I'm serious!" she says because she is. She doesn't have a  _ton_  of prior experience but of the few men she's been with, Fitz is definitely the stand out.

He pats her thigh. "I know," he says without even a smidge of humility.

Her jaw drops open.

He shrugs. "I had a … reputation - at the Academy."

"Oh yeah? So there were lots of other girls?" She twists around, bringing one leg over his so she's straddling him. She's up on her knees, putting her breasts right in his face. It's cold down here, especially this time of night, so she knows it's a good view. "How do I compare?" she asks, letting her voice drop.

He draws in a shaky breath. "I- I, uh-"

She pushes his chin up with one finger. "Need me to refresh your memory?"

" _Yes_ ," he answers almost before she's done speaking and it's all she can do not to laugh at him. His hands come up to rest on her hips, his thumbs teasing her bare flesh above her sweats.

She slides her hands up the front of his shirt and he's already writhing beneath the fabric. (She bets now he wishes he'd followed her lead earlier.) Her arms curl around his head so her fingers can dig into his hair when she brings him close for a long, deep kiss.  _God_ , she loves his hair, and tells him just that when she finally pulls back.

He reaches after her as she climbs off him, his hands skimming her sides. Her skin tingles where he touches her and part of her can't believe she's actually putting distance between them.

"No no no," she says, to him and to herself. "This is about reminding you just how good you have it."

She stops when she's far enough back that he can't grab her without getting up. He's looking at her like he walked out of a desert after forty days and she just drank the gas station's last bottle of water in front of him. She's pretty sure he'll forgive her after this though.

Slowly, she hooks her thumbs in the waist of her pants and begins pulling them down over her twisting hips, inch by agonizing inch. A strip tease might go a little better with music, but she knows if she'd turned any on they'd both end up laughing and never get anywhere. Which might be fun for another time, actually, but right now she's on a mission.

Fitz's hands are digging into the decades old couch cushions. She's not sure if it's to stop himself from jumping at her or to keep from pulling his own pants down. Either way she kind of wishes he'd just go for it.

"Your first," she says on a whim when she's bent forward, one last tug away from fully revealing her underwear. Which aren't even sexy, she realizes now. They're grey and came in a pack of ten at Wal-Mart about twelve supply runs ago.

He gulps and shucks out of his pants and underwear with shaky hands. Oh yeah, he is definitely ready for this.

She straightens and lets go. His eyes follow her pants to the floor and then draw along her legs and up to her face. If he notices the truly ratty state of her underwear, he doesn't seem to care.

"You're beautiful," he says simply with a smile so genuine it makes her heart hurt. She never knew it could hurt in a  _good_  way before.

She comes forward to let him take off her underwear himself. His hands don't shake when he touches her, but they linger everywhere. Even when she climbs back atop him, bringing him inside her, his blunt nails drag along her legs, her ass, her back. Her skin tingles everywhere he touches like there's no limit on erogenous zones. She's never met anyone who could do so much with just his bare hands.

When he's spent and gasping and limp, she throws herself along the length of the couch, leaving her thighs draped over his lap.

"So?" she asks, voice a little high because he's still touching her, his fingers drawing lazy patterns that come teasingly close to her lady bits.

He doesn't even need to be reminded of their earlier conversation. "Definitely the top four."

" _Four?_ " She nearly kicks him in the head. Not on purpose, but she wouldn't feel bad if she had.

He grabs her waving legs, his grip firm. Still smiling, he says, "Top four _times_. The other three all happened in the last two weeks."

She shakes her head. "It was totally five."

"You know, if I had a girlfriend, I wouldn't argue with her about silly things like how many times we'd had sex. I'd let her win."

"And that," Skye says, settling a little deeper into the couch so her butt rubs up against his leg, "is why you'd make a terrible boyfriend. No woman wants the guy to _let_ her win." She sighs heavily and closes her eyes, thinking she might actually be able to get back to sleep now. "I'll just have to put up with you anyway, spare the rest of womankind the horror."

"Yeah?" he asks, a little wary, a little hopeful.

"Yeah."


End file.
